How strange. Humans always seem so much in control. Is it just a grand act, to fool both others and themselves? - David Brin

Apocalypses, apparently, are subject to fashion like everything else. What terrifies one generation can seem obsolete and trivial to the next. Take our modern attitude toward war. Most anthropologists now think this activity was based originally on theft and rape—perhaps rewarding enterprises for some caveman or Viking, but no longer either sexy or profitable in the context of nuclear holocaust! Today, we look back on large-scale warfare as an essentially silly enterprise.

Your faith in Homo technologicus -the Tinkering Man- has one fatal flaw. It offers you no escape clause.

One of life’s joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.